This week’s home screen features my pal Todd Olthoff (Twitter)(Website)(YouTube). Todd is a pastor by day and OS X Server guru by night. Todd has a really great YouTube channel with many Mac tutorials, including an excellent series on Mac OS X Server. Most recently Todd agreed to guest on the Mac Power Users and tell us all about it. Okay Todd, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Some of my favorite apps are replacements for the built in Apple Apps. For calendar I use the incredible Fantastical. Fantastical is one of those applications that simplifies my life not only on my iOS devices but across my Mac devices as well. Nothing like using natural language to set up appointments. Another app I use often is Cobook for my address book. The way Cobook pulls in all of my contacts from not only my address book but from social media as well and puts everything in one place is incredible. I also like the ability to see what my friends have been tweeting about lately just by looking at their contact in Cobook instead of having to go out into another application. It will be interesting to see what happens with Cobook now that it has merged with FullContact.

For social media and keeping up on tech news I use Tweetbot for twitter, Reeder for RSS feeds, Pocket for my read later content, and Downcast for all of my favorite podcasts (like Mac Power Users, of course). I also have a general social folder for all of the other social media sites I touch base with like Google Plus and Facebook.

Being a true Mac geek I love being as productive as possible on whatever device I am working on so I use tools like Drafts to quickly get text based items into my system for later action. I use Launch Center Pro as my starting point for my daily review and other tasks. Putting all of the items I normal check with various swipes and taps in one place has really helped me cut down some of the time it takes for me to get things done. I would also have to add 1Password into my attempt to stay productive and secure on my iOS devices. I just can’t put a value on being able to access all of my passwords in one place to quickly login to websites in a secure manner. 

As far as dealing with writing and information, I am a huge fan of Day One for my daily journaling and capturing life events or thoughts on the run. For more serious writing I use Daedelous Touch. It’s combination with Ulysses on my Mac make it a killer app for me now that I am writing in Markdown (thanks to you David!). For storage and archive I am a big fan of Devonthink Pro Office and I use their companion app to take files and documents with me on the go for easy access when I need them.

And of course, being a Pastor for my day job, I love being able to carry the whole Bible in one little app in my pocket. For this I use the YouVersion App (Which I think is still smaller than one MacSparky Field Guide Book).

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Being a guy who likes to play around with OS X Server, one of the apps I have found a guilty pleasure is Server Admin Remote. This app let’s me access my server’s vitals from my iPhone. I can check to see how my network is behaving, power usage, storage and what services are running. I can also start and stop services remotely and view log files from my server. Though it hasn’t been officially updated for the most current Server OS, I have found it still works for me under 10.9. A great app if you need to keep up with your OS X Server.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

Honestly I use my iPhone more times than I would like to count. It serves as my time piece so I am always pulling it out to check to see what time it is. I also use it to stay in touch with co-workers & family. The iPad I am trying to work into my workflow and find I use it mostly for media consumption, taking notes in places where using a laptop is not convenient, or when I want to travel light. I still heavily rely on and love my 13 inch Retina Macbook Pro! So overall, I am constantly using my iPhone and occasionally use my iPad for tasks needing a bigger screen.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

If I was in charge at Apple I would like to see more cross app collaboration so developers could tie into each other’s apps a little easier. We see with what Readdle has been trying to do with their suite of applications and how they communicate with one another, what can happen when you allow this kind of integration. I know it goes against the current rules, but it really would make the experience of an iOS device more seamless in my opinion.

What’s your wallpaper and whys?

My wallpaper usually changes over time depending on my mood. I have a wallpaper application called Wallpapers 2 that uploads some nice stuff. I usually browse through there from time to time when I get bored of the wallpaper I am currently using.

Anything Else You’d Like to Share?

Thanks so much for the opportunity to share my home screen David!

Thanks Todd.

This week’s home screen features Tom Merritt (Twitter) (Website). Tom is one of the premier tech broadcasters. Tom currently produces The Daily Tech News Show. I also enjoy Tom’s Sword & Laser podcast where he and Veronica Belmont covers fantasy and science fiction books. So Tom, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I’m a big fan of Downcast on iOS. It does exactly what I want in
managing podcasts. I also rely on Feedly quite a bit for keeping up on news. And Tripit is indispensable to me when traveling. Finally Waze. I never go anywhere without it.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Heyday. It looks through your photos and reminds you of what you were doing on this day say, 5 years ago. A fun trip down memory lane.

What is the app you are still missing?

I think if I knew, I would have downloaded it, lol. Actually, I’ll say the new Tweetbot. I still just use the old one.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

A dozen? Hard to say since I use it for podcasting, checking feeds, listening to audiobooks etc. My phone is on my pretty much at all times.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Do not disturb.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

LET ME SIDELOAD APPS APPLE. I’M A GROWNUP.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

My dogs. Because dogs.

Anything else you’d like to share?

When the first iPhone came out it was a marvel. When the app store came out it was like entering a new world. When the iPad came out it was like being able to expand that world into new vistas. Since then the phone has become just a phone to me. It’s a commodity. And you
know what, that’s OK. My computer is a commodity too. Devices don’t have to have that special feeling of amazement if they help you out and do what you need them to do.

Thanks Tom.

This year at Macworld, I made a new friend in Josh Centers (website)(Twitter). Josh is one of those guys that you immediately like upon meeting. He currently writes for TidBITS and recently published a book about the AppleTV. So Josh, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Gmail

I’ve been a Gmail user since it was in beta, and despite my qualms about Google, it’s just too useful to move away from. After a long battle with Apple’s Mail apps, I took your advice and started using the Web interface and official iOS app, and I haven’t looked back. Gmail offers a ton of features that Apple Mail doesn’t, like inbox tabs, push notifications, and showing my own replies in message threads.

1Password and Authy:

Internet security is horribly broken, so it’s essential to have unique, complex passwords for every site I use. I’ve tried KeePass and LastPass, but 1Password integrates best with Apple’s stuff.

Just as essential is two-factor authentication, and Authy takes a lot of the stress out of it. Unlike Google Authenticator, Authy backs up my keys in the cloud and allows me to sync keys between devices.

OmniFocus

I tried OmniFocus long ago, and liked it, but I was too cheap to buy it on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I tried just about every alternative, but when I started becoming overwhelmed with TidBITS and Take Control projects, speaking engagements, and the baby, I caved. Nothing does a better job of organizing tasks and keeping me sane. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer collaboration features, but I have a couple of supplemental apps for that.

Trello

We use the free Trello service to manage TidBITS and Take Control tasks, and the iOS apps are great. Trello lets you set up boards for each project, then inside each board you can create multiple lists full of task cards. At TidBITS, we use Trello to jot down article ideas, track what’s ready to edit, and decide which articles will be in the next issue.

Paprika

For kitchen and grocery management, nothing else compares. My wife and I use Paprika to share a grocery list and store recipes.

Tweetbot

Twitter is a distraction, but it’s also brought me new friends and opportunities. Before Tweetbot, I never used Twitter much, and now any other client feels clumsy. I can’t wait for the iPad update.

Chrome

Chrome is my preferred browser on the Mac, so I also use it on iOS to access open tabs on all of my devices.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

Alien Blue for Reddit. I waste entirely too much time on there, but I always keep coming back. But some of the smaller, more focused subreddits can be a treasure trove of information.

What is the app you are still missing?

Our TidBITS Publishing System is built around the Subversion version control system, so I’d love a customizable text editor like Nebulous Notes with Subversion support. Unfortunately, no such thing exists, which limits my ability to write and edit TidBITS content while I’m away from my desk.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use my iPhone constantly throughout the day. My iPad is usually restricted to my bedside, where I use it to read comics on Marvel Unlimited or ComiXology, and play games. However, when I’m on the road, my iPad Air paired with the Belkin QODE Ultimate Keyboard Case makes a convenient writing machine.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

AirPlay. The capability to take any bit of media and beam it to my Apple TV is huge.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I would overhaul the way Apple handles music and photos. iTunes and iPhoto on the desktop are dreadfully slow, and I get tired of messing with storage space and metadata. I’ve already switched from iTunes to Rdio for my music needs for that reason, and I use Dropbox (for now) to sync photos and videos instead of Photo Stream. I would have iTunes and iPhoto rewritten from scratch, to be introduced alongside cloud-based music and photo services to make these things easier for users.

I would also have iOS inter-app sharing improved. This is one thing Android does right. For instance, let’s say you want to add a Web page to Evernote. On Android, that’s easily accomplished from the browser in a few taps. On iOS, it requires a kludgy bookmarklet that’s both awkward to install and to use.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

On all of my devices, I use the system defaults. They look nice, and it’s one less thing I have to think about.

This week’s home screen features Robert McGinley Myers (Twitter). Rob blogs over at Anxious Machine about “anxiety, technology, and scary things”. I think Rob has a great voice. I really liked his recent piece on The Affordance of Intimacy and doing work on the iPad. Okay Rob, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

The apps that have had the most profound effect on how I use my iPad are Instapaper, Documents by Readdle (paired with PDF expert), Doceri, and Editorial.

I believe Instapaper (App Store) was the first app I ever bought for the iPhone, and it may have been the first app that showed me how apps could change my relationship to digital information. I had long been an avid reader of online journalism, and I had been hacking together my own ways of saving those articles for later by copying and pasting them into text documents, which I would then try to read on my smartphone. Marco Arment’s solution was so elegant that I’ve never looked back.

Instapaper still has the most options for beautiful typography, size, and spacing, and no other app does a better job of saving my place in the article. I know a lot of people have switched to Pocket (App Store), which may do a better job of parsing images and videos from a link, and I wish Instapaper would implement some form of tagging so that it would be easier for me to find articles I’ve saved, but for me there’s still no better app for simply reading.

As a college writing instructor, I also spend a huge part of my work life grading papers, and Documents by Readdle (App Store), paired with PDF Expert (App Store), has made me feel closer to and more in control of the papers I grade. I wrote about this in a blog post, The Affordance of Intimacy, but the short version is that I used to grade papers by tracking changes and inserting comments on my Mac. But PDF Expert gives me such a feature-rich experience of markup tools that I now grade everything on my iPad. And maybe it has something to do with the more direct experience of writing my comments on the screen itself, but I don’t dread the process of grading nearly as much as I used to.

One of my favorite features of PDF Expert is that you can zoom way into a document to write something, and then you have a handy little button to tap that will zoom all the way back out again. Another feature is that when you type or dictate text into a text box in the margin, PDF Expert automatically reformats the text so that it doesn’t overlap with any text in the document. I also love the seamless integration with Dropbox. My one wish is that someday Readdle will enable TextExpander snippets in the app (though I recently played with using Type2Phone to execute TextExpander snippets from my Mac to my iPad, and it works pretty well.)

Another app that has changed my work life as a teacher is Doceri (App Store) (an app I first heard about on an episode of MPU), which turns your iPad into a kind of smart-board replacement. The app pairs with a companion desktop app on the Mac (or PC) and allows you to annotate anything that’s appearing on your computer’s screen by writing on the iPad. I mainly use it in conjunction with Keynote. What I love is that I’m no longer bound merely by the content of the slide. I can put something on the screen for my students to consider, and then as we talk, I can draw and annotate the slide with whatever comes up.

Finally, I know a lot has already been written about Editorial (App Store), but I’m really not sure I would be a blogger without it. I used to contribute to a blog in my former job in public radio, but I never really blogged for myself until the summer of 2013, when I bought a book about Markdown and downloaded this app I’d read about in MacStories.

What amazed me about Editorial in conjunction with Markdown was how easy it was to read something in the attached browser, select text, quote it, and then insert a reference link, all just by tapping a few buttons. It felt like I was reaching into the web, grabbing a piece of it, and stitching it directly into my own tapestry. To me, the best blogs are records of interaction: a person reading the web and then reacting to it, adding his or her own thoughts. Editorial enables exactly that kind of blogging. I actually write more on my blog simply because I want to use Editorial more, and I can’t think of a higher complement.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

MG Siegler wrote a great post on his blog a while back about “The First App You Open in the Morning.” I remember reading it and realizing that the first app for me was always Reeder, my favorite RSS app. The reason I love it is the fact that it’s always delivering new things, but I’ve been wondering lately whether this is good for me.

I once had to take an aptitude assessment called StrengthsFinder, which is supposed to identify your top 5 “strengths,” to help you understand what you’re good at and why. My number one strength was “Input,” which essentially means I love acquiring new information. But I worry sometimes that my desire for the new distracts me from dwelling on the meaningful. I’m like a rat in a cage, endlessly pulling on the lever that will deliver a new pellet. I should be out exploring the world, or at least reading one of the longer pieces in my Instapaper queue. I like how the app Unread (App Store) tries to change how we read our RSS feeds, but I’ll be much more likely to use it when it’s on the iPad.

What is the app you are still missing?

For my to-do list, I use a mixture of Omnifocus (App Store) and Due (App Store), which are both wonderful. Omnifocus is the ultimate project management app because of its ability to show me precisely what I need to see at any given moment in my project. Due is the ultimate reminders app because of its ability to persistently remind me of what I need to remember to do. But neither quite meets my need for a “checklist” app.

I’ve been interested in checklists since I read Atul Gawande’s piece about them in the New Yorker, which he later turned into his book The Checklist Manifesto. His main thesis is that as our lives grow increasingly complicated, one way to reduce the number of errors we make is simply by using checklists for any complicated procedures we have to complete on a regular basis. Among other things, he writes about a group of hospitals that implemented a checklist to try to reduce the number of infections caused by intravenous lines. They simply asked all doctors and nurses to make sure specifi
c items were checked off on a list of best practices every day.

Within the first three months of the project, the infection rate in Michigan’s I.C.U.s decreased by sixty-six per cent…In the Keystone Initiative’s first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated hundred and seventy-five million dollars in costs and more than fifteen hundred lives. The successes have been sustained for almost four years—all because of a stupid little checklist.

In other words, checklists are powerful. Even if we think we know how to do something, our memory is always less reliable than a checklist. And yet, there doesn’t seem to be an app specifically designed for implementing checklists in our work lives. Most of my Omnifocus projects are really checklists, because I do the same things in the same order to prepare for each class I teach. I’m currently using Applescript templates to hack together something like checklists for Omnifocus, but I’d love an app that just does this one thing well.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

The thing that often feels lacking at Apple for me is true respect and gratitude for the developer community. I know they give out Apple Design Awards, which is nice. And they love to cite how many billions of dollars developers have made in the app store (even though most of these are in app purchase dollars for mindless, addictive games). But I rarely get the impression Apple realizes that independent developers are actually the biggest asset Apple has. When I switched to using an Apple computer almost a decade ago, I thought I would get better hardware. But the main thing I got was better software, and that software was provided mainly by indie developers: apps like Omnifocus, Launchbar, 1Password, Textexpander, Keyboard Maestro, Fantastical, and so on. The list has only grown with the introduction of iOS.

Of course, Apple has done things that have helped developers, like creating app stores to help publicize and sell apps. But the chorus of frustration from developers continues to grow. The current implementation of sandboxing, first with iOS and then with the Mac App Store, cripple the power of many apps. And how long have developers been asking about trial versions and upgrade pricing? It would be one thing if Apple gave a clear answer for why they weren’t providing these options. But it’s quite another when developers are met simply with silence.

If I were in charge at Apple, I would acknowledge that my company had helped cultivate the greatest community of software developers imaginable, and that my company’s success depended on sustaining that community. I would do everything I could to communicate with that community, both by listening to their suggestions and ideas, and trying to implement the best of those ideas, so that those developers would continue to be enriched, both literally and figuratively, by developing for my platform.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I remember Steve Jobs onstage at the introduction of the iPad, talking about how amazing it was to hold the internet in your hands. You wouldn’t think just bringing the screen closer to your hands would matter that much, but it does. My favorite feature of the iPad is how my favorite apps allow me to reach out and touch the content (for lack of a better word), to interact with it in novel ways. Whether that’s plucking articles out of the stream for reading later, reaching through a screen to write on a student’s paper or a Keynote slide, or stitching a bit of the web into my blog post, each of these apps enable new, more intimate relationships with digital information. And that still feels amazing.

Thanks Rob.

This week’s home screen features Deron Bos (website) (Twitter). Deron is, among many things, a dad, a professional organizer, and a geek. I love how Deron is bringing his love of Apple technology to his business. So Deron, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Tweetbot

I heard the deafening nerd chorus of praise for this app for years, but it wasn’t until I started tweeting for my business and learning that Twitter is at its best when interacting that I fell in love with Twitter. Even still, my sometimes dominating Dutch cheapness, had me on the official Twitter app for sometime before I ponied up. Now I love it – the swipe to reveal conversations I use constantly and all its satisfying robot sounds are music to my young-on-Twitter heart. I liked it so much that I eventually even bought the $20 Mac version. Totally worth it, look forward to the iPad update…coming soon?

Habit List

I found out about this from David’s Macworld review and knew it would be a good replacement for Good Habits which lacked a sexy iOS 7 design or more importantly the versatilely to schedule certain habits for certain days. I’m mostly using to try to keep myself accountable for networking/social media work for my business, but I’m thinking about moving my morning routine from Reminders to here as well. The one thing I wish it had was the ability to have folders or different contexts, so that “Fill up Buffer with week’s worth of posts” wouldn’t be right on top of “Make boys’ lunches.”

Pushpin

I teach digital organization to my clients, but like any good organizer I’m still figuring it out myself. I’m experimenting with Pinboard after feeling like links and web research would get lost in Evernote. Right now my digital buckets look something like: notes in Simplenote (NVALT on the Mac), long, sprawling, story like articles in Instapaper, scanned PDFs and cold storage in Evernote, more visual organizing links in Pinterest, videos in Pocket, and occasional recipes in Pepperplate. It seems a bit spread out to me at times, but the everything bucket model just hasn’t worked for me in the past.

Downcasts

Yes, its ugly and yes, I’m waiting to see what Overcast is like, and yes, I still can’t fully figure out its playlist feature, but it does stream episodes which for binge-listening a podcast like Fizzle (by recent Home Screen subject Chase Reeves) is key. MPU is heavy in my rotation too along with The Disney Story Origins Podcast and How Did This Get Made?

Reminders

I use lists with different contexts (Phone calls, Computer, Home, Errands, etc) for a very simple GTD system. It works fairly well – almost all the apps I love now have Mac counterparts like this one.

Messages

I love the multi-platform functionality of iMessages. Moving the same conversation from my iPhone to my full Mac keyboard is completely satisfying. Especially when it’s reminding my NYC friend of his perjorative views of turning 40 when he was 25.

Google Voice

This app has always been a bit crappy and it’s probably never going to be updated, but I use GV as my business line so it’s on the home page. I had hopes for GV, but I think it’s going to be integrated into Hangouts which I used the other day for the first time in a very long time and found very pleasing in its design.

Day One

This app knocks it out of the park – in all its ver
sions. I love that it’s plain text, makes a great photo journal, and tags make it easy to place different content (food journal, movie review journal, journal-journal) in one place. An everything-journaling bucket that does work for me.

Reeder

This is one of the first iOS apps I truly loved and it’s still killer for me: pleasurable reading experience with a ton of options to send to the other buckets.

Lyft

I drive part-time for Lyft and the experience itself (rather than the app) of routing rides through Los Angeles with these things still we still call “phones” seems like a huge tip of the iceberg of how integrated technology is radically changing life. It’s continually surprising to me. Plus cute icons.

Waze

I’ve used Waze since it was one of the few free GPS iOS apps and I have to say it’s improved hugely in three years – it often does a very effective job of getting me around LA traffic through some untraditional routes.

Fantastical

Best calendar app, EV-AH.

Chrome

I’m somewhat surprised that I look like Mr. Google here, because I’ve never had any interest in Android, but there are some Google web apps that I’ve used for years fondly like Gmail and Google Docs (now Drive.) I switched to Chrome on my Mac because Safari was crashing so much on me, and it’s been much more stable, but I’m not sure I have the same need for Chrome on iOS. Mobile Safari is very fluid and I might switch back soon.

Gmail

I made the switch to Gmail focused apps after suffering through the Mail-Mavericks debacle and reading Macsparky’s convincing argument for embracing the Gmail apps that fully feature its uniqueness. Among them I like the divided inbox the most on mobile and the ease that it can handle my four (four?!) different Gmail accounts easily in one app. There are some things I miss in iOS Mail, not least of all the way it handles text.

What app is your guilty pleasure?

I don’t feel guilty about it, but an app I love for casual reading is Zite. I was bummed to find out that Flipboard bought it, because I always found much more superior and surprisingly personalized content on Zite.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

As the dad of two young boys, I still seeing having multiple user accounts on the iPad as low hanging fruit for the next version of iOS.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Thanks so much for asking – I think the home screens feature might have been how I found this blog originally so I feel honored to be featured.

Thanks Deron

This week’s home screen features TJ Luoma (website) (Twitter), Presbyterian minister by day, geek by night. TJ writes for The Unofficial Apple Weblog and frequently posts on automation. If that isn’t enough, TJ was our guest this week on the Mac Power Users. So TJ, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

My favorite iPhone app is Spotify, but for one very specific reason. Every morning I drive my son to school and hand him my iPhone 5s so he can control Spotify, which plays via Bluetooth to my car stereo. He’s almost 12, and getting to that age where music is likely to become really important to him, so I like that we have this setup in place. The nice thing about Spotify is that you can ‘star’ songs and have them cached to your iPhone. He has a playlist on my Spotify account and adds songs to it whenever he finds something new that he likes. He likes that he can hear the specific song that he wants to listen to, and not just songs related to some other songs that he said he likes.

In terms of “Wow, having this app on my pocket-computer makes life so much better” I’d say it’s a toss-up between OmniFocus and Safari. Before the iPhone I had a Trēo (actually, several: the 300, the 600, and the 650), and the web browser on it was atrocious. I almost never used it. I can still remember using Safari on my original iPhone and being amazed at how much better it was.

• OmniFocus 2 for the iPhone is wonderful. It’s on my dock (having replaced the almost-never used Phone app) and if there’s a Dock badge, I know I’ve got something time-critical to work on. Getting Things Done isn’t perfect, but it’s the best system I’ve found for remember what I have to do and helping me stay on track. I used Kinkless GTD “back in the day” which was a great system held together by bubble gum, duct tape, and AppleScript. OmniFocus is one of those apps that I can easily take for granted, but what it offers me is exceptional. The OmniFocus iPad app is very good too (although I impatiently wait for its next update.). The iPad itself is the perfect “weekly-review” device for me.

My favorite iPad app is Instapaper. When I was growing up, my Dad read two newspapers a day, and he especially enjoyed the Sunday paper. I don’t think I’ve ever read a newspaper, because I have something better. During the week I send things I want to read to Instapaper, and then I try to read through my Instapaper backlog on the weekend. It’s sort of my version of “the Sunday paper” except that every article is something that I already know I want to read. My Dad would have loved a newspaper like that.

All Notifications Go to My iPhone. None to My iPad.

I don’t use any notifications on Mac OS X, mostly because I use 3–4 different Macs depending on where I am/what I’m doing,1 and I can’t be bothered to set customize everything properly on all of them, so I just leave them off entirely. It used to be that if a message came in via iMessage, I might hear it on 2–3 Macs and 2 iOS devices. Since there are some messages (namely, non-iMessage text messages) which can only go to my iPhone, I decided to centralize all notifications to my iPhone and only my iPhone. So now I only have one digital “Inbox.” Consequently, my iPad has been in “Do No Disturb” since iOS 7 came out, which is great because I primarily use my iPad for reading, and derive great enjoyment out of being able to use it without being interrupted or distracted. (Well, not by the iPad, at least.) Some of my favorite apps are ones that allow me to centralize my messages to my iPhone, which starts by being brutally harsh when any app says that it wants to send me notifications. I almost always say no, because they are always easier to turn on than off but on is potentially worse than off so my default answer isHow About No? I don’t even allow Mail.app to show an unread badge, although, since I use SaneBox I usually have a fairly clean Inbox anyway.

• AwayFind isn’t on my home page, because the only time I need to work with it is when it sends me a notification. There are so many awesome things about AwayFind, but the biggest three are these: 1) it allows me to respond to Certain Important People right away, 2) when I launch AwayFind, I only see the messages from my important people, which means that I don’t get sucked into other email when I’m just trying to focus on Important Email Only, 3) it allows me to turn off automatic email fetching entirely. Everywhere.

• Fantastical on the iPhone is what Apple should have made. The list view of upcoming events is the most logical way to use the iPhone’s screen size, and Apple’s calendar didn’t really offer anything like it until the recent 7.1 update. I still prefer Fantastical, not only for looking at my calendar, but especially for adding things to it. The ability to just write a sentence about what I need to add to my calendar is, well, fantastic. Badge icons tell me I have a specific event happening at a specific time later today, or a reminder of something I either have to orreally really should do today (i.e. call for an oil change). I use Reminders (usually via Siri “Remind me to…”) for simple things, and OmniFocus for anything more complicated.

• Pushover ($5) replaced Prowl for sending notifications from my Macs to my iPhone. I wrote a basic shell script which uses Pushover’s REST API so I can easily send myself a message. For example, my Mac mini runs SuperDuperevery morning at 6:00 a.m. When SuperDuper finishes successfully, it triggers a shell script which tells me so. Lots of other examples like that, just little things, but they all go to my iPhone

“Which app is your guilty pleasure?”

I probably spent more hours playing the original Plants vs Zombies than I’d like to see tallied up and shown to me on my deathbed. More recently I find myself coming back to Dots whenever I feel like doing something mindless but fun. I could spend thousands of dollars in Comixology and I love reading comic books again on my iPad, which is one of the reasons that I’ll always be a “full size iPad” guy.

What is the app you are still missing?

A great text editor. I think I own more than 40 iOS text editors, because each time a new one comes out, I’ll try it, but none of them has combined the right set of features that I want with a UI that I love. It may be that I’m just impossible to please. I keep coming back to Byword, mostly because the UI is nice and the iCloud sync is pretty great.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use my iPhone a lot. A lot a lot. Many. Again, partially because of how I have my notifications setup, my iPhone is pretty much always either in my pocket or on a stand on my desk. My iPad usually goes with me to lunch, and then I use it most of the evening as we’re watching TV or whatever, unless I need to write something, in which case I’ll get out my MacBook Air.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Sync. Being able to start something on one device and pick up another device and continue to work on it there? That’s pretty close to magic. I tend to prefer Dropbox over iCloud for document sync, because if anything goes wrong I can go to the website and see previous version, restore a version, identify conflicts, etc. When it works, iCloud sync is great, but the “black box” aspect of it worries me.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

The first thing would have to be some sort of way for apps to share documents. It’s completely absurd that I have to add a different “silo” of text files for every text editor, and that pictures have to be imported and exported. It’s clumsy, it’s ugly, and it’s completely un-Apple-like, at least unlike the Apple that most of us loved for their attention to detail and “just works” aspect. I don’t know why it’s taking them so long, but it’s the biggest downside to using an iOS device.

The second thing is trial versions of apps and upgrades. The absence of both of those (along with the difficulty of getting a refund) is one of the major factors that has pushed prices towards $0, which has pushed the overall quality of apps much lower. There are some notable exceptions, obviously, but there are a lot of great apps which seem to have been left behind by developers who realized they just couldn’t afford to keep developing them. It’s also given rise to in-app purchases being abused in so many different ways. If Apple wanted a bazillion apps in the app store, well, now they’ve got them. Now we need to think about making the app stores – iOS and Mac – financially viable for developers to stick around long term, instead of what it is now, which is basically a lottery for a few apps that strike it rich.

What’s your wallpaper and why?

This picture of my mom and my son is my lock-screen picture. In my job as an ordained minister, I have to work every year on Christmas Eve. As soon as that service is over, I get in the car and drive 12-hours to go home to see my mom in the house where I grew up. My wife and son usually drive up a few days earlier when school break starts. She posted this picture with the caption:

Next time someone asks me why I drive 12 straight hours from Ohio to Massachusetts, I’m going to show them this picture. Somebody really loves his Grammy!

We’ve been doing this since 2006, and it’s what makes Christmas for me.

(My home-screen wallpaper is a solid dark blue or purple. I like my backgrounds to be plain and non-distracting.)

Anything else you’d like to share?

My home screen on my iPhone changes all the time, but there are a couple of constants. Anything that sends me a push notification has to go on the main screen. I have a “Comm” folder for any apps where someone might be trying to get in touch with me (Phone, Twitter DMs, Kik, Facebook, Pushover, etc) and I play a few “Turn Based” games like Words With Friends and Cribbage HD (I’m always looking for new players, so hit me up on Game Center, I’m “TJLuoma”) so those go into a folder called “Games.”

Due is my “nag me until I do this” app, especially for medication that I need to take every day. It’s repeating alarms are great, and it is persistent enough to keep me from forgetting things, which I have a tendency to do otherwise.

I arrange my iPhone home screen to be all of the apps I use most often. The first app on the second page is the App Store app, and I try to keep the second page mostly empty, because that’s where new apps that I am trying out will go. If it’s not on one of those two pages (or on the dock), I’ll launch it by searching.

On my iPad I have arranged things very differently. The first page is all Apple apps, and the second page is the apps that I use most often. Most of them revolve around reading of some kind or another.

A unsung hero of my app collection is DropCopy which is like like AirDrop, except that it works between iOS and Mac (as we’ll as iOS to iOS, and Mac to Mac). It’s the main way I send files between devices if I need them right nowand don’t want to have to go through Dropbox.

Whew. And here I wasn’t sure what I’d have to say about my home screens! I should have known. I have a friend (who is also a pastor) who says that if you ask a preacher for the time, they’ll probably respond with “That reminds me of a story…”

Thanks TJ.

1. It’s not that I’m rich, it’s that I never get rid of my Macs. I have a “late 2012” Mac mini that’s my office computer, a MacBook Air which was new in 2010, a “hand-me-down” 2008 MacBook Pro, an iMac which was new in 2007, and a Black MacBook that’s old enough that I don’t even remember when it was new. ↩

This week’s home screen features Heidi Alexander (Twitter). Heidi is a law practice advisor and a geek. Heidi blogs here and co-hosts the Legal Toolkit podcast, where she talks about tools to make the practice of law easier. So Heidi, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

Some of my favorite apps include: Wunderlist, Drafts, Hootsuite, Feedly, TuneIn Radio, 1Password, and WordPress. I recently started using Wunderlist as my task list, and I absolutely love it. Drafts is also a newish addition, and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of its functionality. I use TuneInRadio almost exclusively for listening to NPR on my morning commute and WordPress to post quickly to both my work and personal blogs. Although I haven’t listed it as one of my “favorite” apps, I do like the Google app that serves up informative and personal “Google now” swipe-away “cards”. Today’s card read: “Winter Storm Warning in Massachusetts” (yet again). Additionally, of course, with a child under the age of one, the iPhone’s Camera, Photos, and Facetime are absolutely essential. And, it goes without saying that as a regular listener of Mac Power Users, I must keep a Podcast app on my home screen!

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

My guilty pleasure is definitely the Amazon store app. I have Amazon Prime and love the ability to buy with just one click. To help avoid too many impulsive purchases, I moved the app to my second screen.

What is the app you are still missing?

With so many great apps available, I honestly believe that there is an app out there for every one of my needs. The fun for me is in testing new apps (I even have a folder on my second screen dedicated to the apps that I’m testing).

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

I use my iPhone often, but not excessively (although my spouse might disagree). I use it primarily to listen to podcasts and radio, make phone calls, take pictures, view my calendar, and to navigate to a destination. I do most of my drafting and reading on either my iPad Air or iPad Mini.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

Folders, folders, and folders! I love the ability to group and organize apps. Folders comprise my entire second screen.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I’d make Siri more user friendly. I find that Siri often has trouble understanding me (maybe it is my Minnesotan-New England accent blend) and thus I haven’t really focused on learning to use Siri. If Siri could just read my mind, I would never ask Apple for anything again.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Am I the only home screen feature that is still using an iPhone 4S? That’s a bit embarrassing. I’m just a few weeks shy of my upgrade and cannot wait for a new iPhone 5S. Because I use my iPads as much, if not more than my iPhone, I’ve focused on upgrading my iPads over the past couple of years rather than my iPhone. I love my iPads, so it all works out.

Also, in case you were wondering, my home screen wallpaper displays my eight-month-old’s first art project. I’m a very proud parent!

Good for you. I’ve still got art like that on my wall and my daughter is 17.

Thanks Heidi.

This week’s home screen features Chase Reeves (website) (Twitter). Chase is a designer and educator. Chase has a great sense of humor that helps get his message across. So Chase, show us your home screen.

What are some of favorite apps?

Drafts

Everyday I use this sucker to write something no one will see online at one of the blogs (read: i’m a big time internet guy) I run. Also used for quick note capture and jokes I think are funny while I’m drunk but then aren’t funny when I read them the next day.

In all seriousness, though, I’ve started writing more and more in Drafts on my phone. Capturing things in bite sized lines, a kind of shorthand, has helped me put together pieces like this, this and this (warning: that last one’s a bit heavy… and I really did write it in Drafts).

This app is one of those great bits of technology that, most of the time, makes me more human. Note it’s placement for optimal left-hand thumb thumb velocity… i’m serious about Drafts, you guys.

VSCO

How else am I gonna make my boring life look special?

Note: the camera is there upper right as per a tip I heard somewhere (was it Gruber?) about putting the camera app where the lens for the camera is so you don’t fire it up and miss your son’s first steps because your finger was over the lens… ya’ turkey!

Sonos

Fk’n sonos, man. This + rdio has put the music I lost when I had a family back in my life. I just make a bunch of playlists in Rdio for different moods and throw one on ever dinner time… then I can’t hear the way some people chew their food with their mouths open… animals.

Tumblr

This is where I share all those VSCO’d pictures. It’s also where I subscribe to a bunch of great image blogs… perfect for brain dead moments after writing about how cool your phone’s home screen is.

I put this app in a folder, but I shouldn’t. I use this app frequently, and rarely use the others in the folder… though I occasionally open up the Alien Blue app to stay up to date on… erm… “human form art.”

Due

Damn fk’n right I’m not gonna forget to pickup my kid from school… cuz I set a timer. My wife doesn’t set timers because she’s a wife and wives have a whole section of brain matter that dads don’t have. So I set timers using Due.

One oft-used timer is the 26m power nap timer. I’ll admit it, I nap.

Rowmote Pro

I use it to control my media center, a vintage Mac Pro running plex and safari and a whole bunch of “content” acquired in a “perfectly reasonable” way. I’ve got a logitech remote, but running netflix is just a lot easier with this app.

Evernote

Like many clowns on internet, I admire Merlin Mann too much. I always wanted to use the notational velocity… but I was hooked on Evernote from an early age for one reason: audio notes. Most of my ideas start either on the toilet in Drafts or in the car in an Evernote audio note.

Evernote is such a slow and cumbersome app, but i’ll {insert Allan Watts quote here} and assume it’s good to slow down a bit as I wait for search results in the app to show up.

Stanza

I read for about 20m every night. Lights off, dark room, white text on black background. There’s not a single app out there that gets as dark as Stanza. Which sucksbecause this app is old and is never slated for another update.

I’ve tried everything else, and really wanted Readmill to work because it looks sexy, like a designer made it, but they all shine way too bright in the night, it’s a fright… me no like.

Foursquare

I literally just started using this app. Have you guys heard of location-based check-in apps!? Terrific stuff!

A new friend encouraged me to check Foursquare out for a few reasons (he also got me on Path, but I haven’t found a way to care about that one yet). So far I’m liking it more than yelp for recommendations and tips. I live in Portland where we pride ourselves on the ungodly amounts of baristas and service workers we can employ… so the recommendations for this pork-fat-turkey-juice sandwich or that double-decker-beer-bus-handstand place come in handy.

Fantastical

I started with Fantastical, then went to Calendars 5, then threw up everywhere, then went back to fantastical, then went back to Calendars 5 and fell in love with it (for the week view) then went back to fantastical after I saw that it does week view when you turn the phone sideways then decided to unlock rotation on my phone for that one reason then got super stoked about seeing my week in fantastical (better week view than Calendars 5) then hated having my rotation unlocked because I read every night and it turns the apps sideways when I don’t want them to and now I’m too tired from thinking about calendar apps to schedule anything worthwhile to do in my life for a little while.

Others

Rdio is great. I love discovering music this way. I usually leave this app set to “Offline” so it doesn’t mess up my computer’s “Play Later” queue. I typically only listen to my workout playlist on the phone anyways.

Casts app is fine. Everyone’s bitching about podcast apps. I switched a few times, but they’re all basically the same. I subscribe, I want to listen to all of them in reverse chronological order at 1.5 speed. They all do this. I am satisfied. And this one looks a little better than the others. Here’s to hoping Marco shows me what I didn’t know was broken about podcast apps.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

I’ve never been a gamer besides that one time in college where the dorm room had Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 and I felt compelled to beat the game with every player because I’m an idiot. But I’ve just learned how to play candy crush (you gotta break the jellies!) and I dislike how often I want to play it but don’t because people will judge me.

What is the app you are still missing?

Audio notes app… I fire it up, it records, then it sends the audio file over to Evernote with an attempt to put the first 1m into text in the note. There are some Evernote audio apps but they’re buggy.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

When I walk or drive anywhere I’m listening to a podcast… could be Back to Work, Mac Power Users, Radiolab, my show (what? I listen so I can get better.), Bionic, ScriptNotes, WTF (this is the one that started
it all for me)… Every now and again I text my wife too.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I like being able to take pictures quickly. Just upgraded from 4s to 5s and it’s much snappier. That and podcast. And being able to contact everyone around the world and write things when I’m pooping and making music too and that time I had it when I went to sushi with my friends and now I can remember that and then this timeand this time and when I made a website for a guy and then he saw it and send me this and then we became business partners eventually and then my very favorite time. There’s a few things I like about the iPhone… but mostly that.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

This is hard. I’m not a smart apple tech rumor guy. They make stuff that’s so fun to play with. I make all my money using their things. I just got a new MBP retina. Every time I look at anything written on that screen I shit my pants… feels like being on drugs. So it’s hard to get up in the air and see what they’re doing wrong. I hear Marco bitching a lot about developer relations stuff… I’d tell apple to fix that and be nicer to their friends. I’d say, “dude, I have about 30 firewire 800 drives… no FW on the new laptops, seriously?” I’d say that. I’d say, “I saw a collection of those Think Different posters recently and I cried… I literally cried.” And I’d say, “Tim Cook, I like that you’re gay (you’re gay, right?) and I applaud you and how come when my Mighty Mouse gets disconnected for a second I want to slam it so goddam hard and throw it across the room and can you make that not happen more?” And then I’d say, “thx for making me feel awesome.”

Anything else you’d like to share?

I write more here and hope you have a nice day, David!

Thanks Chase.

This week features musician and composer Johnny Knittle (Website)(Twitter). Johnny writes music for numerous television programs and is extremely talented (Johnny’s SoundCloud). Johnny also composed and performed the current Mac Power Users music. So Johnny, show us your home screen.

What are some of your favorite apps?

OmniFocus and 1Password are apps I really love and couldn’t do without. Dispatch is a great email app. Drafts and Launch (Center Pro) are quite handy as well, hence the well earned placements in my dock. Due is great used in conjunction with the OSX app, especially for items which don’t belong in OmniFocus. The newFileMaker Go is a nice update as well.

Which app is your guilty pleasure?

The NYT Crossword app (it’s on page 2) which I play daily, then download older puzzles to play even more often. It has even become part of my bedtime routine. If I had to pick an app from my home screen then the winner is Twitter. I have found Twitter to be quite useful and have even found work that way.

What is the app you are still missing?

A good quality photo management app, something pragmatic.

How many times a day do you use your iPhone/iPad?

An almost inordinate amount, surely. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

What is your favorite feature of the iPhone/iPad?

I love the easy access to the Do Not Disturb control, I’ll quickly put it in DND mode when I’m with the girlfriend or having dinner. Also useful when I have to record or just need my phone to shut up and stop yelling at me.

A close second is the mutli-page folders. I don’t remember who wrote about having empty space on the bottom of the screen but I love it; I have only one app in the bottom of each page which is mostly possible due to the new mutli-paged folders feature.

If you were in charge at Apple, what would you add or change?

I’d spend some of our billions on the rights to Sierra Quest Games then create a new Space Quest; Roger Wilco deserves another chance.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Go Steelers! 2014 is our year. (And yes, I do have the Steelers app on page 2.)

Thanks Johnny

This week features Casey Liss (Twitter)(Website). Casey is a combination straight man/voice of reason on the Accidental Tech Podcast and a very nice fellow. So Casey, show us your home screen.

Favorite Apps

My favorites are the ones I get the most use out of. That list begins with Tweetbot, which I use more than I should. I also quite likeSilo, which I use to keep shared lists with my wife; also, Check the Weather to, well, check the weather. Finally, Fantastical, which is far and away the best calendar app I’ve used.

Guilty Pleasures

Definitely GIFwrapped, which was just released. I have an unhealthy love of animated GIFs, and GIFWrapped lets you get easy access to your animated GIF folder in your Dropbox. (Because, obviously, everyone has an animated GIF folder in their Dropbox). You can copy images or get URLs in no time.

What’s Missing?

Tons of things I don’t know I need yet.

How many times a day do you use your I use your iPhone

Way, way too many. I work as a software developer, so I’m on my Mac all day long during the work day; the iPhone gets a reprieve then. Outside of work, I’m working on being content with not being actively entertained 110% of the time. As much as I love my phone, appreciating the world immediately around me is far more important.

Favorite Feature?

Absolutely its flexibility. The iPhone is truly a pocket computer. The iPhone’s lack of physical distraction from the main input device–the screen–allows it to be remarkably adaptable to any situation.

For a more boring yet concrete answer, Do Not Disturb has been wonderful for allowing more consistent sleep.

If you were the boss at Apple, what would you do?

I would love for Apple to loosen the reins a wee bit for developers. While iOS shines in large part because of its simplicity, there is so much power lurking beneath the surface, waiting to come out. Some are showing us how to make amazing things happen despite the handcuffs. That said, some proper inter-app communication could really give iOS the shove from something to work around versus something to workwith.

It’s a fine line to walk–an “anything goes” attitude would actually be terrible. However, with limits, inter-app communication could really make iOS into a workhorse.

Thanks Casey.